Or, perhaps I should say, "I drink your shamrock ice-milk product." After the jump, and in honor of St. Patty's Day tomorrow, a blast from the past—even though you can apparently still get Shamrock Shakes at McDonald's today. Says Serious Eats writer Erin Zimmer: "I just had one yesterday. Disappointing."
Inside a Sheetz gas station on U.S. Route 29 in Virginia, next to the predictable Slurpee machine, sat an almighty F'Real shake-maker this weekend. Something like a DIY malt shop from the future, it lets you pick from a mini-freezer of ice cream cups (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or a limited-edition egg nog) and thickness settings (extra, regular or less thick). After dropping my vanilla into the sleek blue machine and choosing extra-thick, the cup levitated to a shake-making heaven. Some bzzt noises later, and it dropped back down to our mortal world.
Creamy and chalky-white, it wasn't much more sophisticated than McDonald's vanilla soft-serve, but very satisfying with all that buttercream and host of scary chemicals. Cellulose gum, maltodextrin, carrageenan and dextrose. For $2.29, the most satisfying part, of course, was the futuristic, hands-on element. There's absoltuely no countertop, no glass case or no middleman of any kind between you and the shake! You're basically on par with Jimmy, the jolly-looking, old-timey mascot wearing his ice cream parlour lab coat, smiling at you. He must be thinking back to the dinosaur days of churning by hand. Ha!
If you're going to be watching this weekend's Kentucky Derby but Mint Juleps aren't your drink of choice, why not pay homage to another traditional Kentucky delight? The Philadelphia Inquirer's Craig LaBan visited Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville and came away with Lynn's recipe for her Bourbon Ball Milkshake, a treat made with walnuts, bourbon and chocolate chips that's like "sipping a cold ice cream truffle through a straw, sweet but deceptively potent."
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